The Academy (SkyeWard)
by mermaid12108
Summary: 17 year old Skye is a hacker, determined to expose S.H.I.E.L.D.'s secrets. But after she helps with a mission, she is brought into one of their academy's. She sets a mission for herself:Expose SHEILD secrets from within, without getting caught. She starts to fall for her SO, 19 year old Agent Ward. He & SHIELD make her feel at home, making her wonder who the bad guys really are. AU


**This is the SkyeWard part of a two (Maybe three) part series I'm doing about the academy. The SkyeWard part is an AU that Skye is at the academy and is being posted first because it just happened to be the one I finished first, and because the other one is stuck on my other laptop that I'm locked out of. The other part is a FitzSimmons part. I decided to write what I thought Jemma & Leo's time at the academy was like. At some point, the stories will join together. So, yeah. I hope you guys like this, and that it works out like I'm planning it to.**

 **Okay, I know this first chapter really sucks, but please stick with it. I promise, the rest will be much better. I'll try to get the next chapter out as fast as I can so there will be a good chapter on this story, but please don't give up on it just yet. -Mermaid12108 (Megan)**

Skye crossed her arms, sighing as she slid further down in the metal chair. The cuffs around her wrists tightened as she squirmed. Man, these S.H.I.E.L.D guys didn't kid around. She heard the door open, stay open for a few seconds, and then shut again. A moment later, the black sack was yanked off of her head. She blinked against the sudden assault of bright lights. Once her vision had adjusted, she noticed a woman & a man. The man was dressed in a navy blue suit, and the woman in all black, an eagle logo printed on the shoulder of her jacket. Speaking of those S.H.I.E.L.D guys...

"We've had a little history with your group _The Rising Tide_." The man said.

"I don't...know what you're..."

"Okay, there are two ways we can do this." The female agent said, uncrossing her arms as she walked forward.

"Oh, is one of them the easy way?" Skye said snarkily with a smirk.

The agent smiled without humor. "No."

"Oh." The smirk slipped from her face.

"What's your name?" The male agent asked. Skye decided that she would call him 'Mr. Nice Guy'.

"Skye." She admitted.

"Skye what?" The female agent asked, and Skye hardened her gaze in return. It was becoming very clear who was Good Cop and who was Bad cop.

She continued to glare at the woman, refusing to give her an answer. How pathetic would she look, admitting that she had no last name, that she was the poor little foster kid that no one wanted. It made her look weak. And she couldn't afford to look weak in front of these guys. She couldn't let them intimidate her. After all, she had just made it into the belly of the beast. She wasn't going to blow the entire operation on one little interrogation.

"It can wait." Mr. Nice Guy said, regarding her with curiosity. "There's another name we need from you. A certain hooded hero."

They were talking about Mike Peterson. "Never heard of him."

The female agent smiled. "We never said it was a he."

 _Damn it, Skye._ Okay, it was just a small slip up. She could fix this. She shrugged. "Lucky guess."

"It's obvious you don't trust us." Mr. Nice Guy cut in before the female agent could respond.

Skye huffed out a laugh. "Really? What gave it away?"

"I'm Agent Coulson." Mr. Ni – Agent Coulson said. He indicated his partner. "This is Agent Hill."

"Okay, _Agent_." Skye leaned forward as much as her restrained hands would let her. "Want me to trust you? Let me out of these." She lifted the cuffed hands as much as she could for emphasis.

He nodded. "Okay." _Wait, what?_

The shock must have shown on her face, because he said "Why so surprised? We aren't as evil as your little group thinks we are." _Debatable._ But the cuffs were removed regardless.

"All we're asking for is your cooperation. This man is unstable – he could potentially hurt a lot of people."

The hacker stared at the two expectant agents for a moment, and then it clicked. And when it did, she laughed. She put her elbows on the table, placing her chin in her hands. "You can't beat my encryption, so now you're trying to bargain." She shook her head, still laughing as she sat back in the seat.

" _Billions_ of dollars at your disposal, and I beat you with a laptop I won in a _bet_. Wow."

"You're right, You're good – really good. You cou–" A beeping on his tablet cut him off. He cursed, turning towards the door. He stopped midway, instead coming toward Skye.

"Help us, or the blood of his victims will be on your hands."

Indecision churned within her. She bit her lip, contemplating. She knew what the right thing to do was, she just didn't know if she should do it. Eventually she made her decision. "Ugh, fine. What do you want to know?"

[-]

"His name is Mike Peterson. He has a son – Ace. He has some powers, I don't really know how or what, exactly. He was laid off from his job a few months ago, and his bank account is...okay, it's totally empty. Um, he was married, but his wife left him and their son. Oh," She reached into her back pocket, withdrawing the plastic card. "This is his drivers license." She placed it on the table, and the agents stared at her. "What?"

They'd moved her to another room, this one duller than the last. At least the other one had had that cool honeycomb wall. This one was some sort of...conference room or something. They'd given her her laptop back though, and that was what was important.

"Anything else?"

She'd only had two meetings with the guy, what did they expect? "Hey, I said I knew something. I didn't say I knew a lot."

"That's _all_ the intel you've gathered?"

"The rest is encrypted. My encryption is location-based."

"Take us to the location."

[-]

Agent Hill scanned the area for the umpteenth time, and Skye rolled her eyes. The woman had not stopped doing that since they had arrived at her van. It gave one advantage though: the agent's eyes were rarely on her. Making sure she wasn't looking, Skye quickly slipped the microchip behind the material of her bra. "All done."

The agent turned to her, nodding. "Okay, let's g–" Suddenly, she was knocked down by an unseen force. She straightened in record time, coming face to face with Mike Peterson. He picked her up and slammed her against the brick wall of the alley, letting her unconscious body drop to the ground before he turned towards Skye. He lifted something into her van – Ace, his son, she soon saw – and then climbed in himself, shutting the door behind them. He looked sick, his skin clammy and his eyes frantic. He turned his attention to Skye. "You said you could help me – create a new identity." He said.

She nodded.

"I want you to create a new life for me and my boy – we need to start over."

She nodded again. "Okay."

Turning to her computer she sent a ping of her location through the S.H.I.E.L.D channels, hoping that they figured it out. She may not know exactly what was happening with Mike, but she knew that she was in danger – danger that she couldn't get herself out of.

[-]

"Are you almost done?" Mike asked impatiently. Skye glanced over at him, becoming more nervous as she gave him another once-over. He looked like a junkie, and Skye wondered what was making him this way. It had to be whatever was in that thing in his arm. He was a part of the centipede program, that was for sure. "Give it time." She said, turning back to the program currently running on her laptop. "It's not like I'm deleting a Facebook page. I'm hacking into the DMV, the Department Of Public Records –"

"Okay, I get it. Just keep working on it."

Chatter could be heard through the door of her van, and Skye tensed at the same time Mike did. She could make out the voices of the two agents from earlier, and one new one. Mike lurched forward, grabbing Skye roughly by the arm and kicking the door to her van. It went flying, past the three agents and onto the concrete behind them. Mike jerked them into the train station he'd driven her van to, reassuring his son as he dragged all three of them along. Skye desperately looked for an escape, and found one. She kicked a guy that looked like he had recently been in a fight in the leg as hard as she could. "Wow, you were right; he is a little bitch!" She said, and yanked her arm free as the guys turned on Mike. She took Ace's hand, leading him away from the fight. Agent Hill, now conscious, came up and took the little boy, and also made a grab for Skye, but stopped as a loud scream filled the air. The two women turned toward the noise, and what she saw made Skye's stomach drop. Mike had thrown the two guys clear across the room, and knocked another agent looking guy to the ground. Skye got shoved into the panicked crowd until a strong hand grabbed her arm again. "What did they do with my son?" He shouted at her, a vein in his temple not just throbbing, but...glowing? _What the hell?_ He yanked her forward, and she looked behind her to see the agents ushering people out. "Mike, you don't want to do this." She tried to reason with him.

"I don't? What did they do with Ace?" He practically growled.

"They can help you."  
"Who, the big guys in suits? What, do you work for them now?"

"Mr. Peterson." Agent Coulson's voice rang out in the now-empty train station. They both turned towards him. "We can help you."

"Give me my son!"

"I'm going to need you to calm down. Your son is safe, trust me."

Some of the anger left Mike. "I'm not a bad guy."  
Agent Coulson nodded, raising his hands in a "I mean no harm" gesture. "I know."

Other parts of Mike's skin glowed that weird orange color again, this time more widespread and intense.

"I just wanted to help people."

Agent Coulson nodded again.

There was another flash of that light, and this time the hand around her arm flared with heat.

Another flash, this time almost his entire body glowing. The heat intensified to a burn. Skye hissed at the stinging feeling. "I wanted to be a good fa –"

There was a small pop, and then Mike's grip on her arm went slack, and he fell to the ground. The glow flashed once before going out completely. She looked down at him, again confused by what she saw. A bright blue was spread across his forehead, retreating back into a hole in his forehead that looked like a bullet hole. But, he was still breathing. She let out a breath she didn't know she had been holding.

[-]

Skye slid into the car, giving one last look at the little boy before turning to the agent beside her. They had dropped Ace off at his aunt's house; he would stay there while his father was rehabilitated at a S.H.E.I.L.D facility. "Okay, I have to ask. What did you do to him, to save him?"

Coulson smiled. "Some technology developed by two of our most promising scientists, student's at our Technology & Sciences Division of the S.H.E.I.L.D academy. I'm sure you've seen their files during your unauthorized search of our database."

Skye recalled two agents that had stood out to her; two students at the top of her class. They were just 16, only a year younger than her, but their IQ's put hers to shame.

"Agents Fitz & Simmons?"

"That would be them." He turned the key in the ignition and the car came to life, the engine purring.

The car started forward, and soon they were off of the dirt roads and onto asphalt.

"We couldn't find anything on you." He admitted. "Not even a birth certificate."

They wouldn't have. She had run from her foster home – St. Agnes' – a year ago. So the state wouldn't find her, she removed herself completely from every data base. Everything that proved she existed at all only had one copy, stored on her laptop with an encryption built into it that would make Steve Jobs cry. Soon after that she had joined _The Rising Tide_ , and had been with them ever since.

"I'm good at what I do." She finally said.

"Very good. You could be a great asset to us. You know, the Technology & Sciences Division isn't the only S.H.E.I.L.D academy there is."

"Oh?"

"There's also Operations."

"What happens there?" She asked.

"That's classified."

She laughed. "Classified. Of course it is."

"I'm going to give you a one time offer."

She raised her eyebrow. "Oh, really?"

"Mhm. Join S.H.E.I.L.D, train at the Operations academy. Get your ticket to the craziest show on earth. What do you say?"

She pondered it for a moment. "Okay." She finally decided.

[-]

"This is Agent Ward." Coulson said, indicating the other agent from the train station, the one she later found out had shot Mike. "He'll be your S.O. at the academy."

"What?" Agent Ward turned to Coulson angrily. "No."

They had returned to the main S.H.E.I.L.D base, "The Hub" she had remembered reading during her latest hack of their database.

Skye laughed. "Him? On the 'People Skills' portion of his evaluation, there was a little poo – with knives sticking out of it."

"It was not a poo." Agent Hill, who stood beside her, muttered.

Agent Ward turned to her. "You read my file?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Um, hello – hacktivist. Of course I read your file."

He turned back to Agent Coulson. "She is not qualified to be an agent."

"Agreed." Coulson said.

"Hey!" Skye protested.

"That's why I want you to be her S.O.. _Make_ her into an agent."

Agent Ward looked her up and down, grumbling a barely audible "Fine."

Agent Coulson smiled at her. "Welcome to S.H.E.I.L.D, Skye."

[-]


End file.
